Giant Sequoias in Deep Snow
Near the north end of the Congress Trail in Giant Forest, Sequoia National Park, California, USA
March 21, 2011 11 am
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© 2012 G. Donald Bain, All Rights Reserved.
Caption
It was a bit late in the season for snow-shoeing, the snow was getting hard and icy. But then a late storm laid down 14 feet of new powder in the Giant Forest of Sequoia National Park.Our first effort to snowshoe through the forest met with disaster. The new snow was so soft and deep it was hard to lift our feet to the surface. Plus, if we had capsized we would have sunk out of sight. Notice the bridge just ahead on this trail - with ten feet (3 meters) of snow piled on it.
Then the sun came out and started melting the snow in the treetops. At first this resulted in a steady fall of snowflakes and coin-sized clumps of fluffy snow. Then baseball-sized, and soccer-ball sized. Once in a while there were small-car-sized masses! And these were falling from as high as 200 feet (60 meters).
We retreated, and postponed our walk until the next day, when conditions were perfect.
More panoramas of the Congress Trail in the Kings Canyon, Sequoia, and Southern Sierra Nevada section of my website.
Location
Lat: 36° 34' 45.5" N
Long: 119° 46' 0.18" W
Elevation: 6960 feet (2120 meters)
Precision is: Unknown / Undeclared.
Equipment
Photographed with a Canon 5D Mark II digital SLR with a 15mm Canon fisheye lens, on a Nodal Ninja VR mount, Really Right Stuff ballhead, and Gitzo carbon-fiber tripod. Stitched with PTGui Pro 9 on a Macintosh Intel Core 2 Duo iMac, retouched with Photoshop CS3.
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